Friday music blogging: Josh Ritter

It’s been a great year for music. In addition to fantastic new albums from Cloud Cult, Modest Mouse, Okkervil River, and Band of Horses, there’s the latest from everyone’s favorite “new Dylan,” Josh Ritter. Ritter’s talent for marrying hooky melodies with knotty, literate lyrics has won him some passionate fans — more than one Gristie is nursing a crush (or man-crush as the case may be, yeah I’m looking at you AB). Out about exactly a year after critical darling The Animal Years, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter brims with 14 new tunes, with not a dud among them. The guy’s clearly at the peak of his powers.

This song, “The Temptation of Adam,” is one of the more musically subdued on the album, but the lyrics are friggin’ amazing. I’ll put them below.

If this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm I said on the first occasion that I met Marie We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door And I don’t think that she really thought that much of me

I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb She just came along and started to ignore me As we waited for the Big One I started singing her my songs And I think she started feeling something for me

We passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside What five letters spell “apocalypse” she asked me I won her over saying “W.W.I.I.I.” We smiled and we both knew that she’d misjudged me

Oh Marie it was so easy to fall in love with you It felt almost like a home of sorts or something And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new And I watched you with my thumb above the button

Then one night you found me in my army issue cot And you told me of your flash of inspiration You said fusion was the broken heart that’s lonely’s only thought And all night long you drove me wild with your equations

Oh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take Makin’ love and then ransack the rations I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions

Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map Of all the places where you thought that love would be found But I would only need one pin to show where my love’s at In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground

We could hold each other close and stay up every night Looking up into the dark like it’s the night sky And pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead And carve our name in hearts into the warhead

Oh Marie there’s something tells me things just won’t work out above That our love would live a half-life on the surface So at night while you are sleeping I hold you closer just because As our time grows short I get a little nervous

So I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I. Would we ever really care the world had ended You could hold me here forever like you’re holding me tonight I think about that great big red button and I’m tempted

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